📰 Centre’s SC affidavit jars with TRIPS stand
Govt. said bringing vaccines under statutory regime will be ‘counter-productive’
•Public health advocates and intellectual property rights experts point to a “contradiction” in India’s global push for suspension of intellectual property protection with its stand in the Supreme Court that bringing COVID-19 vaccines under a statutory regime will be “counter-productive” at this stage.
•India, along with South Africa, had initiated a proposal for the temporary waiver of certain provisions in the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to facilitate fair, affordable and universal access of COVID vaccines and medicines, especially for developing countries.
•The two countries had highlighted that some WTO members had carried out urgent legal amendments to their national patent laws to expedite the process of issuing compulsory/government use licences. However, experts point to an affidavit filed by the Centre in the SC on May 9, which shows the government taking a different stand in favour of protection of intellectual property rights. “Any exercise of statutory powers either under the Patents Act, 1970 read with TRIPS Agreement and Doha Declaration or in any other way can only prove to be counter-productive at this stage,” the Centre said in the affidavit. The government said that it is “very actively engaging itself with global organisations at a diplomatic level to find out a solution in the best possible interest of India”.
•In fact, the Centre even goes to the extent of issuing a word of caution that “any discussion or a mention of exercise of statutory powers either for essential drugs or vaccines having patent issues would have serious, severe and unintended adverse consequences in the country’s efforts being made on global platform using all its resources, good-will and good-offices through diplomatic and other channels”. An April 30 order of the SC had “flagged” the legal framework within which the Centre could “possibly consider compulsory licensing and government acquisition of patents”.
•However, not all are impressed by the balancing act.
WHO classification has implications for pandemic control measures
•Inspite of adding the highest number of cases in the world every day, India continues to label itself as a country with no community transmission (CT), opting instead for the lower, less serious classification called ‘cluster of cases’, according to the latest weekly report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on May 11.
•Countries such as the United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, France — and a perusal of the list of over 190 countries suggest the majority — have all labelled themselves as being in ‘community transmission’. Among the 10 countries with the most number of confirmed cases, only Italy and Russia do not label themselves as being in ‘community transmission’. Both countries have been on a declining trajectory for at least a month and together contribute less than 20,000 cases a day — about 5% of India’s daily numbers.
•India, since the beginning of the pandemic has never marked itself as being in community transition.
Risk for more people
•Broadly, CT is when new cases in the last 14 days can’t be traced to those who have an international travel history, when cases can’t be linked to specific cluster. The WHO guidelines further suggest four subcategories within the broader definition of CT. CT-1 implying “Low incidence of locally acquired, widely dispersed cases...and low risk of infection for the general population” with the highest, a CT-4 suggesting “Very high incidence of locally acquired, widely dispersed cases in the past 14 days. Very high risk of infection for the general population.”
•States and countries are expected to classify themselves appropriately and point to the kind of public health measures in place.
•Instead, the classification, ‘cluster of cases’, that India chooses to describe itself in says “...Cases detected in the past 14 days are predominantly limited to well-defined clusters that are not directly linked to imported cases... It is assumed that there are a number of unidentified cases in the area. This implies a low risk of infection to others in the wider community if exposure to these clusters is avoided”.
•India’s national positivity rate, or the proportion of tested cases returning positive, is around 21% and around 533 of the 734 districts had reported positivity greater than 10%. There are 24 States with more than 15% positivity and 10 with over 25%, according to figures from the Health Ministry on Thursday. With lockdowns or some form of major restrictions on public movement in at least 18 States, it underlines that no area in the country is safe from the coronavirus.
•Health Ministry officials have even advised wearing masks at home, acknowledging the scientific consensus that the virus spread through aerosols than from contact with large droplets from surfaces.
•The closest Indian government came to acknowledging CT was when Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, in October said at public, web-meeting, in the context of West Bengal that “...In different pockets across various States, including West Bengal, community transmission is expected to occur, especially in dense areas. However, this is not happening across the country. It is limited to certain districts occurring in limited States.”
In denial
•An expert told The Hindu that India’s refusal to describe itself as being in community transmission was an “ostrich in the sand” approach since being in CT — far from being stigmatic or an indicator of failure — had a bearing on how authorities addressed a pandemic.
•If cases were still a cluster, it would mean that the government ought to be prioritising testing, contact tracing and isolating to prevent further infection spread. CT, on the other hand meant prioritising treatment and observing advisories to stay protected.
•“We may have been in community transmission since last April. Testing continues to be useful for forecasting the future course of the pandemic (through random tests) and preparing for it,” said Dr Jacob John, epidemiologist and Professor, Christian Medical College, Vellore. “Or it is useful if there is a specific course of treatment, or medicine, that can be prescribed once someone tests positive. However, that’s not really why the government seems to want to avoid the term. It just makes us look stupid.”
📰 India received $83 billion in remittances in 2020, says World Bank report
The report said India’s remittances fell by just 0.2% in 2020, with much of the decline due to a 17% drop in remittances from the United Arab Emirates
•India received over $83 billion in remittances in 2020, a drop of just 0.2% from the previous year, despite a pandemic that devastated the world economy, according to a World Bank report.
•China, which received $59.5 billion in remittances in 2020 against $68.3 billion the previous year, is a distant second in terms of global remittances for the year gone by, as per the latest World Bank data released on Wednesday.
•In 2019, India had received $83.3 billion in remittances.
•The report said India’s remittances fell by just 0.2% in 2020, with much of the decline due to a 17% drop in remittances from the United Arab Emirates, which offset resilient flows from the United States and other host countries.
•India and China are followed by Mexico ($42.8 billion), the Philippines ($34.9 billion), Egypt ($29.6 billion), Pakistan ($26 billion), France ($24.4 billion) and Bangladesh ($21 billion), it showed.
•In neighbouring Pakistan, remittances rose by about 17%, with the biggest growth coming from Saudi Arabia, followed by the European Union countries and the United Arab Emirates.
•In Bangladesh, remittances also showed a brisk uptick in 2020 (18.4%), and Sri Lanka witnessed remittance growth of 5.8%.
•In contrast, remittances to Nepal fell by about 2%, reflecting a 17% decline in the first quarter of 2020.
•The World Bank, in its latest Migration and Development Brief, said despite COVID-19, remittance flows remained resilient in 2020, registering a smaller decline than previously projected.
•Officially recorded remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries reached $540 billion in 2020, just 1.6% below the 2019 total of $548 billion.
•“As COVID-19 still devastates families around the world, remittances continue to provide a critical lifeline for the poor and vulnerable,” said Michal Rutkowski, Global Director of the Social Protection and Jobs Global Practice at the World Bank.
•“Supportive policy responses, together with national social protection systems, should continue to be inclusive of all communities, including migrants,” Mr. Rutkowski added.
•Remittance inflows rose in Latin America and the Caribbean (6.5%), South Asia (5.2%) and the Middle East and North Africa (2.3%).
•However, it fell for East Asia and the Pacific (7.9%), for Europe and Central Asia (9.7%), and for Sub-Saharan Africa (12.5%), the report showed.
•The decline in flows to Sub-Saharan Africa was almost entirely due to a 28% decline in remittance flows to Nigeria. Excluding flows to Nigeria, remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa increased by 2.3%, demonstrating resilience.
•The relatively strong performance of remittance flows during the COVID-19 crisis has also highlighted the importance of timely availability of data. Given its growing significance as a source of external financing for low- and middle-income countries, there is a need for better collection of data on remittances, in terms of frequency, timely reporting, and granularity by corridor and channel, it said.
•“The resilience of remittance flows is remarkable. Remittances are helping to meet families’ increased need for livelihood support,” said Dilip Ratha, lead author of the report on migration and remittances and head of KNOMAD.
•“They can no longer be treated as small changes. The World Bank has been monitoring migration and remittance flows for nearly two decades, and we are working with governments and partners to produce timely data and make remittance flows even more productive,” Mr. Ratha said.
•Remittance outflow was the maximum from the United States ($68 billion), followed by UAE ($43 billion), Saudi Arabia ($34.5 billion), Switzerland ($27.9 billion), Germany ($22 billion), and China ($18 billion).
•Remittances outflow from India in 2020 was $7 billion, against $7.5 billion in 2019, according to the World Bank.
📰 Temporary respite: On latest retail inflation and industrial output data
Price stability must be maintained even as steps to boost demand are taken
•The latest retail inflation and industrial output data from the National Statistical Office (NSO) offer some relief from the pall of gloom cast by the relentless second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Provisional headline inflation slowed to a three-month low of 4.29% in April, helped by softer food prices and a statistical base effect. The rate using an imputed index for the year-earlier period was 7.22%. A separate NSO release showed March industrial output jumped by 22.4%, benefiting again from the fact that the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) had posted an 18.7% contraction in March 2020, when the economy was halted by the start of a nationwide lockdown. A closer look at the inflation data reveals a substantial cooling in the prices of cereals, milk and milk products, vegetables, and pulses and products. While both cereals and vegetables saw a deflationary trend widen to -2.96% and -14.2%, respectively, dairy products, which have the second-largest weight in the food and beverages category, also slid into deflation territory at -0.13%. And price gains in pulses, which had been bothering monetary policy makers by having been stubbornly stuck in the double digits over an 18-month stretch, decelerated into single digits to reach a 20-month low of 7.51%. The combined impact slowed inflation across the food and beverages group by more than 250 basis points to 2.66%.
•Still, the same Consumer Price Index data also point to persistent price pressures that could potentially fan faster inflation in the coming months, especially at a time when the socio-economic burden of the crippling pandemic and the impact of the lockdown that several States are resorting to is yet to be fully gauged. Price gains in meat and fish quickened to 16.7% and was little changed at 10.6% in the case of eggs, while inflation in oils and fats accelerated almost 100 basis points to 25.9%. Transport and communication also remained in the double-digit range at 11.04%, despite benefiting from the virtual freeze in the pump prices of petroleum products that coincided with last month’s Assembly elections. Now, with global crude oil starting to firm again and local petrol and diesel prices resuming their upward trajectory, the prospect of haulage costs — for transporting goods from factory and farm gates — rising in the near term is very real. Add to the mix rising international commodity prices and the outlook for inflation gets even more cloudy. Industrial production numbers may also provide cheer only for a limited period, aided in no small measure by output having cratered in the first few months of the last fiscal. IHS Markit’s PMI survey for April showed new orders and output having slowed to eight-month lows, and with the pandemic-triggered factory shutdowns threatening supply disruptions, industrial production and inflation face challenges. Policymakers must stay vigilant to ensure price stability even as measures to bolster demand are the need of the hour.
📰 Should political prisoners be released during the pandemic?
Political prisoners can be let out on bail and be treated like they are in detention
•As the second wave of the pandemic rages across India, the country’s overcrowded prisons are in danger of becoming major hotspots for the spread of the disease. Dozens of political prisoners, mainly civil rights activists, continue to languish in prison indefinitely with no possibility of their trials commencing any time soon. In a conversation moderated by Jayant Sriram, Sanjay Hegde (Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India) and V. Suresh (National General Secretary for the People’ Union for Civil Liberties) discuss whether political prisoners should be released in view of the pandemic. Edited excerpts:
The Supreme Court has dismissed the bail plea of Gautam Navlakha in the Bhima Koregaon case. When we talk about political prisoners in India, there are a few prominent cases that come to mind thanks to the media — activists arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case, activists arrested during the anti-CAA [Citizenship (Amendment) Act] protests, and those detained in Kashmir. How many others are there that we just don’t hear about and who is not getting any legal aid right now?
•V. Suresh: The unfortunate reality is that people seem to think that political prisoners are there only with regard to these high-profile cases. Actually there are cases from about 12-13 States — hundreds of people have been arrested and kept in prison for what are essentially political offences. This means that they have been put in prison on account of their political affiliations or allegations that they participated in conspiracies of a political nature. It’s a pity that many of these prisoners are not known; their cases have not come to the public eye. There are hundreds of Adivasi prisoners in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. There are people belonging to the minority communities in Karnataka, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, apart from Delhi and other places.
Even during the pandemic, we see that political prisoners are repeatedly denied bail with no indication that the trial for the offences they have been put in jail for will start any time soon. What could be the justification for keeping them in prison?
•Sanjay Hegde: You have to see why they were arrested in the first place. They were arrested because a political executive, headed by the respective Home Ministries, whether of the Centre or the States, said, do something about these people. The police then file an FIR, do an investigation which results in a charge sheet, and then arrest the person. The arrest is then defended through the courts, and when particularly harsh provisions like the UAPA [Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act] are applied, then, thanks to certain judgments of the Supreme Court, there’s almost no chance of the person getting bail in the interim period. Now, if the UAPA is invoked, or if something like sedition is invoked, technically, the sentence could extend to life. So, these people do not even have the benefit of ordinary administrative orders which have been passed, which say that anybody likely to face a sentence of less than seven years can be released during the pandemic. The courts themselves have passed such orders. It’s a different thing that these trials do not even start. And when they are heard, it will be after the 14 years that a normal life sentence entails. We do not have a system in the country; we have a process. And the process is the punishment.
For prisoners held under provisions like the UAPA, is there any other recourse during the pandemic other than repeatedly applying for bail?
•Sanjay Hegde: The only other recourse is political, i.e., if the charges are dropped. The state always has the right to withdraw charges. The moment the UAPA or anything is invoked, the judges give it extremely careful attention, more than it deserves, and tend to lean more towards keeping the person detained. None of our laws were built with the idea that a pandemic would intervene. All that we are doing temporarily is suspending ordinary laws during the pandemic or saying that in ordinary cases, we will let prisoners go. But at the end of the day, the virus does not respect how long the person is likely to be imprisoned. The virus just sees people who are huddled together and it spreads. Now, I do not see the logic of keeping people in prison, not giving them bail and putting them at risk of catching the virus. And then letting them die without even a determination of innocence or guilt.
•There has to be a method in which the court can say that during the pandemic, you can treat them to be continually in detention, but you can release them to be with their families. Those methods can also be evolved, but they have not been done.
•V. Suresh: The first thing that we need to acknowledge is the irony in our criminal justice system. To put it as an aphorism, one can say that the law defines offence, but the state defines offender. The law may say that a particular offence will come under the UAPA or will constitute a terrorist offence or a seditious offence. But it is not merely what the law says; it is what the state determines through the arm of the police. When the state defines the offence, that’s when the mischief comes in. We saw that selective interpretation of who an offender is during the Delhi violence last year. Unfortunately, the reality is not taken into account by the courts who know very well the poor conviction rate in UAPA and sedition cases.
•Let’s look at the conviction rates as per the NCRB [National Crime Records Bureau] report of 2019. The conviction rate for the UAPA shows a very low 3.1%. If you take earlier laws like TADA [Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act], it was 1.4%. POTA [Prevention of Terrorism Act] was relatively better, but on the whole, we have abysmal conviction rates. These conviction rates in many cases are poor not because the investigating officers goofed up but because these offences often did not actually take place, they were cooked up.
•As Mr. Hegde mentioned, the process itself is the punishment and in PUCL [People’ s Union for Civil Liberties], we have been arguing that if you let people out on bail, that itself will reduce the harshness of many of these laws.
•Now, in a context like COVID-19, there has been a classification of prisoners into those who are facing a sentence of seven years or less, those who are facing a sentence of more than seven years and those who have been convicted under special laws like the UAPA. This classification was made by a committee set up by the Maharashtra government and it recommended that only the first category can be eligible for release, to decongest the prisons.
•This categorisation defies common sense. When you have such a low conviction rate, what is the justification for keeping people inside for long periods during the pandemic when they are at the mercy of the prison administration?
•This was challenged in the Bombay High Court by the NAPM [National Alliance of People’ Movements] and went up to the Supreme Court as well, but the classification of prisoners was upheld.
•Now, the latest order of the Bombay High Court in a PUCL application before it records that 241 prisoners tested positive. Another worrying fact is that a number of jail staff, too, have tested positive. So, when you look at it from any which angle — jurisprudential, political or humanitarian — there’s no justification for keeping these prisoners in jail for such long periods. The courts have also recorded the fact that 95% of the people who were let out on interim bail had reported back when the situation had improved in January this year. So, there’s no reason why these prisoners should not be out on bail.
Dr. Suresh brings up an issue here, that in India and globally, prisons are considered hotspots for the virus to spread. There have been numerous instances in which the courts have noted that there is an overcrowding of prisons. Have any reforms or solutions to this problem been advocated?
•Sanjay Hegde: The courts can pass orders but the responsibility for implementation lies with the administration. And if the administration doesn't implement it during a pandemic, it is hardly likely that there will be material before the courts to pull up the administration in contempt or anything like that.
•To the best of my knowledge, all that the administrations have been doing is trying to decongest prisons, but this by itself is no guarantee against infection. We have no idea about prisoners’ vaccinations. The congestion still continues because even if people are released on bail or parole, many are unable to meet bail conditions, for instance.
•The point is that unless the administration as a matter of policy really looks at all these prosecutions that it has launched and says, okay, where there are no repeat offenders, where the offences are relatively marginal, where people have spent a year or two in prison, it is better to just close the file by withdrawing the prosecution, or accepts plea bargains from the prisoners, so that they can be released into society and into the slightly better safety that the outside world affords, what they’re essentially doing is allowing the possibility of small sentences to degenerate into a sentence of death within the prison walls.
•V. Suresh: Look at what happened with the case of Sudha Bharadwaj or Siddique Kappan, both very well-known cases. Sudha Bharadwaj was said to be COVID-19 negative but she fell very ill over the past couple of weeks. Kappan, who tested positive for COVID-19, was shifted from a U.P. jail to Delhi because of the Supreme Court. And even before the order had been worked out, the U.P. police took him back, right under the nose of the Supreme Court. Now this shows the type of disdain that the executive has towards even the Supreme Court.
•In the case of political prisoners, nobody from outside can go in, there is no communication from inside coming outside. So, if at all you get to know what the situation is outside, it’s more by accident than by a system in place, which makes it all the more important for us to open up these jails. Otherwise, you will only have a sense of casualties which will add to the number of COVID-19 deaths. What’s the point in talking about it in a post-mortem manner when you could have very easily ensured that there is better care for these prisoners? The examples of Sudha and Kappan are only examples; there are probably numerous other examples in other States which are never heard about — Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bengal, Karnataka, Andhra, and various other States. I think we need to really focus on many of these States because we don’t get to know what’s happening there.
📰 Reforming medical education
An unfettered market approach is not the answer to the health workforce crisis
•India’s health systems have been confronting numerous challenges. In order to effectively address these challenges, our health systems must be strengthened. One of the critical building blocks of the health system is human resources. The serious shortage of health workers, especially doctors, in some northern States is a major impediment for achieving the health-related Sustainable Development Goals. Health workers are critical not just for the functioning of health systems but also for the preparedness of health systems in preventing, detecting and responding to threats posed by diseases such as COVID-19. If urgent action is not taken, the shortage will amplify and health systems will get further weakened.
•The workforce crisis has been aggravated by the imbalances within the country. For instance, the doctor-population ratio in northern States is far short of the required norm, while the southern States, barring Telangana, have enough doctors in possession. There is also a general lack of adequate staffing in rural areas.
Shutting out the poor
•These health system challenges will remain largely unaddressed with the government’s market-oriented approach towards medical education. There is no denying that in order to meet the significant shortfall of qualified doctors in northern States, scaling up of medical education is warranted. However, certain proposals, such as the NITI Aayog’s proposal of allowing private entities to take over district hospitals for converting them into teaching hospitals with at least 150 MBBS seats, may sound attractive but there are reasons to be deeply concerned. Through the implementation of such a policy, the private sector in medical education will be encouraged; it will also directly aid the corporatisation processes of healthcare provisioning while the under-resourced public health system will be a collateral damage.
•District hospitals are considered as the last resort for the poor. This will change. The corporatisation will make the services very costly and exclude them from getting care. Even from the perspective of producing more doctors to meet the shortages in under-served areas, this is unlikely to yield the desired result. Private players treat medical education as a business. Thus, it would shut the door on a large number of medical aspirants who would otherwise have a strong motivation to work in rural areas but do not have the means to finance themselves. Additionally, the medical graduates trained in such private sector ‘managed’ medical colleges will prefer to find employment in corporate hospitals and not in rural areas to regain their investment. Further, this proposal is not aligned with India’s national health policy goals like achieving universal health care and health equity. Instead, it will widen health inequalities further.
•Solving doctor shortage, therefore, needs long-term thinking and commitment from the political leadership. The government should learn from previous cases of public-private partnerships (PPPs). In the past, contrary to the expectation that markets would help increasing access to primary and tertiary care for the poor through private players, the evidence supporting their effectiveness is very limited. In fact, many PPPs had to be shelved owing to the non-compliance of the agreement conditions by the private sector under which they were also supposed to cater to the non-paying patients.
A public good
•An unfettered market approach or a regulated market with medical colleges that are publicly funded but privately operated, providing competition for traditional government medical colleges, is not the answer to the health workforce crisis. Medical education is a public good as its purpose is to improve the population health and decrease disease burden.
•The pandemic has provided us an opportunity to make medical education a public good once again. There should be a substantial step-up in public investment in medical education. By establishing new medical colleges, the government can increase student intake as well as enhance equitable access to medical education. Besides, it must allocate adequate financial resources to strengthen the overall capacity of existing medical colleges to enrich student learning and improve output.
📰 The crime of enforced disappearances must end
Cases especially in Asia are not decreasing, with domestic criminal law systems insufficient to deal with this atrocity
•The democracy movement in Myanmar is at a critical juncture. On February 1, 2021, the military launched a coup d’état to overthrow the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy.
•The military is committed to suppressing the people’s movement, and the police are carrying out unimaginable acts of violence and oppression against those demanding freedom of expression and the restoration of democracy.
•Since the coup, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) has received reports of enforced disappearances from the family members of victims. There is concern that there will be a plethora of cases of enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention, and even murder if the situation continues to deteriorate.
•Myanmar is not the only country in Asia that enforced disappearances are becoming a major concern. There are other leaders and regimes that have the mistaken notion that they can do anything to maintain their power. Regretfully, this includes using enforced disappearances as a tool to suppress the people.
Concerns around minorities
•In China, the Working Group has received numerous reports from family members and concerned civil society organisations that a massive number of enforced disappearances have occurred in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Under the pretext of re-education to prevent terrorism, members of the Uyghur minority ethnic group are forcibly sent to what Chinese authorities call ‘vocational education and training centers’, with no information on their whereabouts and fate given to their families.
•The Working Group Chair has met many people from the region who are trying to find out what happened to their family members and they are living in fear. It is especially concerning because the basis for such forced disappearances is often very trivial: for example, having relatives living abroad or maintaining international contacts could lead to an enforced disappearance. ‘Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL)’ under Article 73 of the amended Criminal Procedure Law, is used against individuals accused of endangering state security, and is another issue of serious concern. Because RSDL places individuals under incommunicado detention without disclosing their whereabouts, it may amount to a form of enforced disappearance.
Post-conflict issues
•Sri Lanka has experienced more than three decades of domestic conflict, which was accompanied by various forms of enforced disappearances. It seemed that there was some hope developing because of efforts by the government to confront its history. However, recently, the government is weakening initiatives it previously started to search for and investigate enforced disappearances and has now returned to promoting a culture of impunity for these crimes.
•It is also disheartening to point out that enforced disappearances are being committed in the name of counter-terrorism measures. Increasing numbers of enforced disappearances are being reported in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and it does not seem that the situation will improve in the near future.
•Enforced disappearances became widely known to the world in the 1970s and the early 1980s during the ‘Dirty War’ in Argentina where the Argentine military dictatorship committed the forceful disappearances of some 30,000 of its own citizens while denying that they kidnapped, tortured, and murdered them. To fight against these gross and systematic human rights violations, the UN Commission on Human Rights established the Working Group in 1980 as the first special procedure mechanism of the UN Commission on Human Rights.
•An enforced disappearance is defined by several constituent elements. First, it is characterised by the deprivation of liberty, where persons are arrested, detained or abducted against their will or otherwise deprived of their liberty. Second, there are grounds for seeking governmental responsibility for the act, including of officials of different branches or levels of government or by organised groups or private individuals acting on behalf of, or with the support, direct or indirect, consent or acquiescence of, the government. Third, such an act typically occurs in the context of a state’s continuous refusal to take relevant action, including refusal to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the persons concerned or refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty, which places such persons outside the protection of the law.
Remedial measures
•Under the Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance (1992), the Working Group works to assist families of disappeared persons to ascertain the fate and whereabouts of the disappeared and to assist and monitor states’ compliance. Additionally, with the assistance of the secretariat members based in Geneva, the Working Group monitors states’ compliance, and documented cases of enforced disappearance. The Working Group receives individual petitions from victims’ families and civil society members, and channels them through to the relevant governments to demand searches for the disappeared persons, investigations, and punishment for those responsible. The WGEID also presses states to offer remedies, including compensation and a guarantee of non-recurrence of the violations.
•Since its inception, the Working Group has transmitted a total of 58,606 cases to 109 states, and as of 2020, the number of outstanding cases under active consideration stood at 46,271 in a total of 92 states. Unfortunately, the number of cases of enforced disappearances in Asian states is not decreasing and we are seeing a rapid increase in some countries.
•The Working Group has serious concerns about the impact of COVID-19 on enforced disappearances. Not only have enforced disappearances continued during the pandemic, but it has generated new contexts for enforced disappearances and has reduced the capacity of all actors to take the necessary action to search for and investigate cases of disappeared persons.
Ratifying the Convention
•To protect the right to be free from enforced disappearances, the international community adopted the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance in 2006, which became effective in 2010. However, the number of participating states is still very low compared to other treaties. Among 63 member states of the treaty, only eight states from the Asia-Pacific region have ratified or acceded to the treaty. Only four East Asian states — Cambodia, Japan, Mongolia, and Sri Lanka have ratified it.
•Asian countries should consider their obligations and responsibilities more seriously and reject a culture of impunity in order to eradicate enforced disappearances. They should also understand that their domestic criminal law systems are not sufficient to deal with the crime of enforced disappearance. An enforced disappearance is a continuous crime that needs a comprehensive approach to fight against it.
•While working as an expert for the UN Human Rights Council’s Working Group for the past five years, I have come to understand that one of the most tragic dimensions of the crime of enforced disappearance is the suffering that is inflicted on the people who know the victims. Enforced disappearance is a serious crime that goes against the philosophy of humanity. The pain and suffering of the family members do not end until they find out the fate or whereabouts of their loved ones. Bottles of water and facial tissues should always be readily available when interviewing the family members of the disappeared persons because their stories cannot be told without tears.
•Mothers looking for sons, wives looking for husbands, and the children looking for parents demonstrate the endless chain of tragedy in our contemporary world. This human atrocity must end immediately. I hope that the international community will strengthen its efforts to eradicate enforced disappearances as soon as possible.
